XNA Communal Shower, Vol. 13

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Blast off, blast factory, blasty blast blast.

By Sam Bishop

Microsoft has given some control of Xbox Live over to the average Joe and Jane. Community Games, made with XNA Studio development tools, are now available. These titles aren't under the same restrictions as Xbox Live Arcade games and are generally made by independent developers, which means they don't have achievements or the requirements of Microsoft certification.

Where there are only one or two XBLA games released each week, there could be dozens of Community Games released in a single day. And all of them cost a little scratch. So how do you know which Community Games are worth a damn? Well, of course, you'll get by with a little help from your friends at IGN.

Each week we'll round up the latest batch of Community games. We'll give you our hot picks and offer special awards for every game we put under review. We recommend always downloading the trial version of any Community Game to make sure it meets your personal tastes.

Poor little bomb, doomed to eventually explode no matter what. But! You can help! Collect clocks to stave off the inevitable (or bigger clocks to scoop up bonus points) while using the triggers to rotate the entire level 90 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise. Far more enjoyable than the game's perhaps overly-colorful visuals would suggest, SmudgedCat has done a great job of working their basic concept into something that's both challenging and surprisingly addictive. Great work, SmudgedCat.

Once again, simplicity + execution = greatness. Halfbrick's little game just has you blasting off from your home planet to scoop up some spacewalking astronaut buddies on the way to some kind of wormhole supergate mega... thing. Later levels have you fighting the tug of gravity and carefully planning the power levels of your blast-offs from Earth, which only makes things more fun. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the game is so good considering Halfbrick already has a full-blown XBLA game in the works (which you see the ad for if you click on the video), but that doesn't lessen the enjoyment you'll get out of this one in the least. The fact that even the demo is loaded with levels means that there's really no excuse to not take a look, and if you listen to my advice, you'll buy the whole shebang.

There's a reason why I chose to write (poorly) about games instead of be an astronaut. Find out what it is by clicking the above image.